Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep

We come to know and trust God’s love more deeply through our own crosses, the things that make us feel we cannot go on, the things that make us tired—the

This prayer has the audacity to ask that the God of the universe would stoop not only to heal us but to care for us, to nurse us in our most unimpressive states. We need God to bring wholeness to our souls, even through the brokenness of our bodies.

The light came into the darkness and did ordinary work.

There is wisdom that can be wrought only in self-denial—only when all our other props, devices, and numbing agents are taken away.

But this kind of humiliation humanizes us. Facing our frailty and limitations teaches us how to be human.

All of human life, our suffering and joy, our ordinary heartbreak and laughter, every moment of our lives, has meaning because our end is to discover ourselves to be in Christ, eternally beloved of God.

There is no yokeless option. It seems to me the weary should be unyoked altogether, but instead Jesus suggests that all people are under a yoke, that it’s impossible to not be yoked to someone or something.

We want grief to be a task we can complete; the oven timer of our soul dings and we’re on to something else. But that isn’t how grief works.

owes us nothing. Any happiness, success, or desire fulfilled is a gift to be received gratefully.